What Wasaga Beach actually asks for
From the municipality's own permit checklist:
- HVAC Design / Calculations
- Energy Efficiency Design Summary
Schedule 1: Schedule 1 - Designer Form.
Verify on the municipality's own page →
Checklists change. Check the current one before you submit — and if the letter
you received names a document you have never heard of, send it to us and we
will tell you what it is.
Wasaga Beach is not listed in SB-1 — here is what that means
Supplementary Standard SB-1 does not list every Ontario municipality, and
Wasaga Beach is one it leaves out. SB-1 says so itself: "As it is not
practical to list values for all municipalities in Ontario", and directs you to
Environment and Climate Change Canada for a recommended value for an unlisted
location.
What you must not do is use the nearest town's number. SB-1 contains no
"nearest location" provision and warns that interpolating to other locations may
not be valid because of local effects.
What to do instead, in order:
- Ask the building department which row they expect you to use. Some
municipalities publish this — Clearview and The Blue Mountains both direct
designers to the Collingwood row in writing, which makes it a sourced value
rather than a guess.
- If they have no position, request a value from Environment and Climate
Change Canada's Engineering Climate Services Unit, as SB-1 instructs.
We do this as part of every job in an unlisted municipality, and we put the
source of the figure we used on the assumptions page so your reviewer can see it.
Source: Ontario Building Code SB-1 (2024), Table 2 — Climatic Design Data.
What each document actually is
| Document |
What it is |
| Heat loss and heat gain calculations |
The room-by-room load. Everything else is sized off this. |
| Formula sheet |
The working behind the numbers, so a reviewer can follow them. |
| Thermal load calculator |
The envelope assemblies and areas the loads were built from. |
| Air leakage calculator |
The infiltration assumption, stated rather than buried. |
| Residential ventilation summary |
The OBC 9.32 ventilation design, on the HRAI summary form. |
| Duct design and layout |
Supply and return sizing, register locations, cfm per room. |
| Energy Efficiency Design Summary |
How the house meets SB-12, prescriptive or performance. |
| Radiant in-floor design |
Loop layout, spacing, manifolds and lengths. |
| Hydraulic load calculations |
Flow and head for a hydronic system. |
Who is allowed to sign it
You hire a qualified designer. They complete the Schedule 1 Designer
Information Form with their BCIN and take responsibility for the design.
You are the owner, building on your own lot. Ontario Building Code
Division C, Article 3.2.5.1.(3)(b)(i) exempts an owner who designs a house they
own from the designer qualification requirements. You can file the documents
yourself. The calculations still have to be correct — the exemption is about
who may design, not about the standard the work has to meet.
Tell us which applies and we will tell you what you need before you pay.
What it costs
|
Includes |
Price |
Turnaround |
| Heat loss and heat gain |
Room-by-room loads, worksheet, design conditions, equipment sizing basis, assumptions, seal page |
$395 |
48 hours |
| Full mechanical package |
The above plus ventilation design, duct design and layout, EEDS, and radiant layout where applicable |
$695 |
48 hours |
Forty-eight hours from complete plans and payment. If the building department
asks for a correction to something we got wrong, we fix it and reissue at no
charge while your application is open.
See a complete sample package →
Common questions
Do I need all of these documents?
Not always. A heat loss calculation alone satisfies some permits; a new
dwelling with a hydronic system needs close to the full list. Send the plans and
we will tell you which.
The department has already asked and my build is held up.
That is the most common reason people call. The 48-hour turnaround exists for
exactly that.
My HVAC contractor says he will size it.
He may be right about the equipment. The building department still needs the
documents, and the Code requires equipment capacity to be based on the
calculated design heat loss.
I'm adding a basement apartment, not building a house.
Different job: no drawings, an existing furnace, and a check that it can carry
both units. Here is how that works → The
design temperature and the checklist above apply to it just the same.
Does an ICF or high-performance house change the answer?
Same procedure, different inputs. The result usually comes out substantially
lower, and more of the difference comes from air sealing than from the wall's
R-value. We run that comparison on every job.
Start
Send your plans — we'll tell you what you need before you pay →
Building in Wasaga Beach: what changes the design
Wasaga Beach has changed a lot. What used to be a summer cottage town now has full subdivisions and many old cottages turned into year-round homes. The design temperature is the same as Collingwood, but the houses are very different.
Converted cottages are the tricky ones. They often sit on a slab or crawlspace with little insulation, and the owner wants to add rooms at the same time. The heat loss tells you whether the envelope has to be fixed before you buy equipment, which saves money on both.
In the newer subdivisions most of our work is basement finishing, second units, and switches from gas furnaces to heat pumps. Each of those needs a design that matches the house, not the model number on the old unit.
Common Wasaga Beach projects we design for
- Cottage to full-time home conversions
- Slab-on-grade and crawlspace bungalows
- Basement finishing and second units
- Heat pump switches in newer subdivisions
What to send us
- Floor plans and elevations, or a clear sketch with room sizes
- Window sizes and type (or the window schedule)
- Your fuel: natural gas, propane, oil, electric or heat pump
- Anything special: radiant floors, a garage or shop, a second unit
What the Wasaga Beach examiner looks for
The building department wants a CSA F280 room-by-room heat loss at the Wasaga Beach design temperature (-21 C), equipment sized from that number, a duct or piping layout, ventilation that meets the code, and the designer's BCIN on Schedule 1. Miss one and the permit comes back. We send it all together so it goes through the first time.
Have plans ready? Send them in and we will call you back with a price. Want the background first? Read what a full HVAC design package includes.